Till Summer Do Us Part(99)

“And what about you?” Sanders asks as I fidget in my seat. “How do you feel?”

I glance over at Wilder, and not able to hold back my smile, I answer, “Amazing.”

“Well, this is exactly what I wanted to hear.” Sanders tosses the ball in the air and catches it. “I truly felt like you guys needed a moment to clear your minds, and you did that on your own. You found each other again, talked out some issues, and now you’ve started being intimate once more. Do you feel like you’re communicating well again?”

“For the most part,” Wilder says, eyeing me. “I think there was some holding out on communication last night, but once I pressed, she let me in.”

Sanders turns his attention to me. “Why were you holding out on talking to Wilder?”

“Um, because I just wasn’t sure if he was in the same frame of mind as I was,” I answer honestly. “And I didn’t want to feel embarrassed if he wasn’t.”

Sanders nods his head. “Holding information out of fear is the biggest form of miscommunication, but it’s also the most common. Every relationship, no matter how excellent you are at talking to your partner, experiences a form of miscommunication. It’s human nature. We become guarded, we don’t want to get hurt, we’re unsure of how the other person is going to respond, so we hold our cards close to our chest. We don’t tell the entire truth, which always hurts the relationship in the long run. It’s so incredibly common, so much so that Ellison and I suffer from the same thing at times. It’s one of the biggest issues among all my couples.”

“That makes sense,” Wilder says. “In a world where we live in our phones, it’s easy to hold out, to not practice simple conversational techniques.”

“Exactly. It’s why we confiscate phones while you’re here, because we want you hearing your partners. We want you seeing them. We want you at your rawest form.”

“Well, we were pretty raw last night.”

“Wilder,” I chastise.

“What?” he says on a laugh. “The condoms are fifteen dollars a pack. I wasn’t paying that much to cover up when you’re on birth control.”

The only reason I know he knows that is because he’s seen me take the pill at night before I climb into bed.

He then looks Sanders in the eyes and says, “Fifteen dollars? Really, man?”

Sanders doesn’t even balk at the number as he says, “Capitalism at its finest.”

“How do you sleep at night?” Wilder asks.

“With my wife next to me.”

Wilder nods. “Smooth answer.”

“Thank you.” Sanders sets the ball and glove down and then folds his hands together. “You have three more full days left here. I want you spending them together, working out any other issues that might be plaguing you, and coming up with a plan for how to deal with them in everyday life, because when you return to society, I don’t want you to fall back into your old habits. I want this marriage to work. To thrive. So spend the next few days coming up with that plan, and at the end of camp, I want to hear that plan. Understood?”

We both nod together.

“Good. Now, for today, I want you to go on a date. I want you to plan it together and then see it through. It could be whatever you want. We have a booklet in the main building, where you can decide what that will be. But I want it to be fun. Think you can handle that?”

“I think we can,” Wilder says.

“Perfect.” Sanders stands, so we do as well. “I look forward to seeing what you picked. And remember, we’re moving forward, not backward.”

“Right,” I say. “Forward.”

Wilder takes my hand, and together, we walk out of the cabin and down the path toward the main building.

“I can’t believe you told him we had sex last night and this morning,” I say.

“Why? He’s our therapist. He needs to know that.”

“He’s our pretend therapist.”

“Feels pretty real to me. Also, just be happy I didn’t write on everyone’s cabin window this morning that we fucked, okay? Because if I had it my way, I’d let everyone know. I would have called in a marching band, some skywriters, maybe even a magician who would make me magically appear out of a box only so I could shout into a megaphone that we fucked.”

“That seems a bit over the top.”

“You’re right. Maybe a touch too much. How about this? Should I just say it in greeting to everything I see? ‘Good morning. How are you? Scottie rocked my world last night with her pussy. How was your night?’”

“Oh my God, stop it,” I say, pushing at him, causing him to laugh.

“It’s true.”

I stay silent, shaking my head, because I really don’t know what to say to that.

After a few seconds of silence, he says, “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Yes, I do.”

He stops and turns me toward him. “Look me in the eyes, and say you believe me.”

I sigh heavily and look him in the eyes. “I’m…I’m trying to believe you. And it doesn’t have anything to do with you but instead everything to do with me. Just one of those roadblocks I have to get over.”

“I understand,” he says softly while tilting my chin up with his finger. “But just know, I’d never lie about that. You…Scottie…created a monster, because after last night, I’m addicted. And I’m counting down the fucking minutes until I can have more of you.”